Three Hearts, One Soul
by Freline
Summary: Vir, Alisa and Sinclair meet on Minbar during the middle of the Shadow War. Together they start to make a plan to fight the Shadows and realize that the Humans are not the only race with Minbari souls.
1. Chapter 1

During the whole flight from Babylon 5 to Minbar Vir had thought about Londo. He could not believe that his friend had sent him away, now that he might need him the most. He feared that, with him gone, Londo would be lost completely to the influence of Mr. Morden. When the ship finally approached the planet, he forgot all that had left him sleepless in the last two days.

Even from orbit he could see that Minbar was absolutely beautiful and he regretted that he had not come here before. After the landing Vir took his bag and stepped outside. The sight left him speechless for a while. The city of Yedor, where the Centauri embassy was located could not be compared with anything he had seen before. He stood there, looked around and waited for his contact, a Minbari called Helann that was supposed to show him where he was going to live from now on.

One hour passed and no one seemed to be looking for him, so Vir decided to explore the area for a while. Even though he did not want to go to too far away, he soon found himself in another part of the city and could not find his way back. He did not speak Minbari good enough to ask anyone for the way back to the spaceport, no one except Delenn who had taught him the basics had ever bothered to teach him, not even Londo. Just as he thought that he was completely lost he saw a human girl, about fifteen or sixteen years old, that seemed vaguely familiar to him, although he could not remember where he had met her before. He called out to her and she turned around. The Minbari she had been talking to looked at him as well. He did not seem very happy about the interruption, but the girl ignored it.

She came towards Vir and stretched out her right hand. He took it, like he had seen the humans do a lot of times and squeezed it. She grimaced, obviously he had hurt her. He tried to apologize, but she only shook her head as if she had expected something like this. Then she said: " My name is Alisa Beldon. I think I have seen you before, but I do not know where". That was when Vir remembered.

He had been in the Zocalo one morning, when a trader had seen a thief and called security. Then suddenly someone shouted for a med team and he had seen her, lying on the floor, covering her head with her hands. After that time he had not seen her again, he only heard a rumour that a human girl, which must have been Alisa, had left with a Minbari cruiser.

He returned to the present when he heard Alisa cough. She stared at him, obviously still waiting for an answer, so he replied: "I only saw you once on Babylon 5, when you tried to steal something from the Zocalo and then fell to the floor. My name is Vir Cotto, back then I was the assistant of the Centauri ambassador. Now I am the Centauri ambassador to Minbar. "

Alisa smiled, she seemed satisfied with the answer. But before she could say anything else, the Minbari next to her suddenly grew impatient and started to pull her away. Before they left, she called over her shoulder: "I will see you again, Vir Cotto, be sure of that."

After they were gone, it felt like someone had placed something in his left pocket. He pulled it out and saw that it was a map of the city. Obviously Alisa had not lost her skill, because Vir had not even noticed that she had given it to him.


	2. Chapter 2

Alisa was bored, all she could do at the moment was sitting around. Her telepath training had ended a month ago and now it looked like no one knew what to do with her. The meeting yesterday was the only thing that disrupted the boredom for a while. It had felt good to meet someone who was not a Minbari. She liked them, but sometimes they were really getting on her nerves with all their rituals for almost everything.

Vir Cotto seemed like an interesting person and Alisa wished that she would have been able to talk to him for a while longer before Davenn had pulled her away. She had hoped to get some news from Babylon 5. She missed the station and would give everything for a chance to see Lt. Commander Ivanova and Ms. Winters again. They had constantly argued about her, but to Alisa they felt like two older sisters.

She stood up from her chair, ready to get something to eat as she heard two Minbari outside thinking about something called "Shadows". They were projecting a image of ships even darker than the blackness of space and Alisa could feel their fear. She forgot any thought about food immediately and went outside. She walked to her favourite garden, where she had met Commander Sinclair, who had been sent to Minbar as Ambassador, for the first time in two years. Alisa had been glad to see him again, it had felt good to know that she was not the only human here.

Since then they had tried to stay in contact as much as they could, sometimes he asked her to meet him for dinner, but he always seemed distracted and left as soon as they had finished. Several times she had seen him talking to Minbari and Humans wearing strange brown cloaks. When she was near they stopped, as if they had been talking about something they did not want her to know.

She did not know what it was, but she intended to find out and so she had waited. Today it seemed as if she was getting closer to the secret. After she had walked around for a while she heard another group of Minbari, wearing the same brown cloaks Alisa had seen before, thinking about these "Shadows", whatever they were. When they left, she followed them at a distance, so they would not notice her.

They had almost gotten to the other side of the city when they finally stopped. Alisa ducked behind a wall, so that they would not see her. The group went inside a buidling and Alisa came out from her hiding place. She almost screamed when someone touched her shoulder, the only thing that stopped her was the shadow of the familiar Centauri hair crest, which told her that it had to be Vir that was standing behind her. She turned around and whispered: "What are you doing here?"

He looked nervous as if he expected someone to hear him as he answered: "I think I want the same as you do. I heard the Minbari talking about an army being formed to fight the Shadows and I want to help in every way I can." Her face must have told him everything, because he started to tell her everything he knew about them.

They had sent a representative to Babylon 5 a while ago, who started to influence Vir´s friend, Ambassador Londo Mollari, to a point where Vir did not even recognize him anymore. His once best friend had become a stranger to him at the moment he boarded a Centauri war cruiser and watched the Narn homeworld being bombed with mass drivers, forcing them to offer unconditional surrender, which ended the war between the Narn and the Centauri that had started after the Shadows had attacked the biggest Narn civilian colony and the Centauri had shown up afterwards. That had led the Narn to believe that the Centauri had attacked and they declared war on the agressors. Thousands of Narn had died during the attack and the survivors were now slaves of the Centauri again, like they had been not so long ago during the last occupation that lasted for about a hundred years and only ended ten years ago.

When she heard that, Alisa felt hatred for the Shadows boiling inside her. At this moment she swore to herself that she would do everything she could to stop those monsters and she knew that Vir would do the same. They were the ones who had hurt him by forcing him to stand by helplessly while his best friend was walking down a path of destruction.


	3. Chapter 3

Vir and Alisa stayed behind the building until it was getting dark. Nothing further had happened, so they decided to go back to Vir´s house. When they arrived, Alisa was close to falling asleep, so Vir put her on the bed and tried to get comfortable on the floor.

He laid there for a while, listening to Alisa breathing while she slept. He was tired as well, but as he could not stop thinking about what he had heard today, it took him a while to calm down enough to sleep.

This night he had a dream, where he stood on one side of a deep ravine with Londo on the other and Mr. Morden standing on a bridge between them. Vir slowly walked across the bridge towards him, intending to get to Londo and try to convince him to stop what he was doing. When he reached Mr. Morden, the man pushed him over the side. While he was falling, Vir thought that he would have had no success anyway. Trying to get Londo to realize that it was wrong what he was doing, was like trying to move a big, heavy rock. It was probably more than he could expect from someone who had been told the Narn were barbarians almost his entire life, like most Centauri had. Vir was one of the exceptions, his family had never cared enough about him to tell him something else than how stupid he was. They had been so glad to see him gone that they did not even say goodbye on the day he had left to go to Babylon 5.

He woke up at the moment he reached the ground and saw Alisa sitting next to him, looking unsure if she should wake him or not. When she realized that he was awake, she handed him a glass of water. He took it gratefully, his throat was dry as if he had just run across a desert without stopping.

After he had drunk, he felt a bit better.

He looked to the window and saw that it would be morning soon, so he asked Alisa if she wanted to go for a walk with him. He needed to go outside until the memory of the dream had faded a bit.

She hesitated for a second and looked at him as if she wanted to say something, but then she agreed.

They walked to Alisa´s favorite garden and she showed him the flowers that grew there, but Vir did not really listen. His thoughts were still on the dream. He knew what it had meant and he hoped that he would be able to prevent it sometime in the future.

After a while Alisa seemed to realize his confusion and put her arm around his shoulder. They stood like this for a while until Vir finally felt that his head was becoming clearer. He pushed Alisa´s arm away and walked a few steps, before he noticed that she was still standing in front of the flower bed, looking lost.

He started to go back to her, but she suddenly turned around and ran away. Vir tried to follow her, but she soon disappeared. He walked back to his house, trying to find a reason for her behaviour, but coming up with nothing.

He did not see her in the next three days, but on the fourth day, she knocked on his door and she was not alone. Next to her was a Minbari, who introduced himself as Inesval and invited him for dinner with the human ambassador to Minbar. When he asked them who that was, they just smiled and Alisa answered: "He is an old friend to both of us. You will see him soon enough."


	4. Chapter 4

Inesval said goodbye quickly after he had delivered the message. As soon as Vir and Alisa were alone, she looked at the ground and Vir sensed that she felt embarrassed about what happened the last time he saw her. Before he could say anything, she took his arm and pulled him behind her, leaving him barely enough time to close the door. They walked through the streets, or rather Alisa was walking, Vir stumbled along behind her, hardly able to watch where he was going and nearly landing on the ground a few times. Every time that happened, Alisa stopped and apologized, but did not slow down. She claimed that they were already late.

A short time later they arrived at a house Vir would never have recognized as an Ambassador´s residence. It was a two storey building, at the ground floor probably the Ambassador´s office and at the second floor his private rooms. Alisa let go of his arm and knocked at the door.

After a few seconds it was opened by a young human woman approximately 35 years old. She looked vaguely familiar and Vir wondered if he had seen her on Babylon 5. Alisa put her arms around the woman, they seemed to know each other well. When she finally let go again, she turned around and said: "Vir, this is my friend Catherine Sakai, you may have met her already. She is the Ambassador´s fiance."

Vir said nothing, he did not know how to respond to that. Instead he waited until Alisa and Catherine were inside, before he followed.

At first, the interior of the house was like he had expected from the outside, but after they had entered the first floor, everything changed.

The corridor and the rooms were full of pictures with landscapes from every imaginable planet and there were hundreds of statues and other things standing around on the tables and the boards.

While he took it all in, he glanced at Catherine, who smiled and explained: "I used to work as a planetary surveyor for a mining company, one of the best, if I may say so. The job paid well and I always stopped at the first inhabited planet and bought something to remind me of my newest success. If you excuse me now, I have to get my fiance to stop working and join us for dinner. He tends to forget it over his reports or whatever the Minbari give him."

She went back down the stairs and returned soon with a man that Vir knew well, following her, a man he never expected to see again, although it was a pleasant surprise. He had been one of the only ones he could call a friend. Vir stood there, speechless, for about a minute, before he had recovered. Then he said: "Hello, Commander Sinclair. I never thought I would see you again after you were gone without a word." The former Commander of Babylon 5 laughed and replied: "Neither did I, Vir. It is good to see you. I was quite surprised when Alisa told me you were here. I heard that Londo sent you away and that he has a new advisor now. Promise me that you will try everything to get him to take you back. I fear that without you he will fall to the enemy completely. You may think that he is lost already, but there is still hope for him. But enough talk about business, the dinner will get cold if we do not eat soon." He showed them to the living room, where the table had already been set and the food served.

To Vir´s surprise they had thought about getting Jurbeen as part of the main course and Snicks as dessert. They even had brought a bottle of Jala. It was not hot, but that did not matter, he liked it either way. Sinclair smiled as he watched Vir eating and said: "I imagined that you probably are getting bored of eating Minbari food. I do not want to be respectless to them, but I eat almost the same in different variations every day, so I have used your visit as excuse to import food from Centauri Prime."

Vir turned his head away from the table. Before he and Londo became friends, no one would ever have thought about doing something like this for him. He was overwhelmed with unwanted memories of his uncle and aunt hitting him every time he did something wrong, his cousins laughing at him after they had pushed him to the ground and his numerous teachers looking at him disappointed. His entire life before coming to Babylon 5 he had been regarded as a failure. Suddenly he was not hungry anymore. He stood up, excused himself and left the house. He heard Alisa calling, asking him what was wrong, but he could not answer her. He wandered through the streets until he got tired and collapsed on the spot.


End file.
